Paperless Grading
After a quarter century of grading student essays & carring around a briefcase stuffed with student work for the better part of each semester, I am making the leap to on-line electronic grading. I am using Turnitin’s Grademark system & though I’ve only done a few essays so far, it has been working very well. [...]
Starlings
Many people who like birds don’t like starlings. Non-native invasive species & all that, which is true enough. And they can be pests when they congregate in large groups. But I like them with their squat gold-flecked black bodies, yellow eyes, muscular flight, & ability to reproduce the sounds of other creatures. Konrad Lorenz claimed [...]
Filtered Sunlight
Woke this morning to clear blue sky & a temperature of six below zero, but over the course of the day a thin layer of clouds has covered the sky & the temperature has risen into the thirties. The sun feels stronger but far from its spring strength. Drank coffee & ate toast. By mid-morning [...]
Josh Marshall
I’m usually to the left of Josh Marshall politically, but he’s the best writer in the left blogosphere. This is the final paragraph of a recent Marshall mini-essay on the surge.
Central to the Republican line on Iraq and much more to the Democratic one than I think is sometimes realized, our whole vision is now [...]
Moral Complicity in Genocide
There is a foul moral odor rising from the University of Chicago. And it is not the first time. The decision not to divest holdings in Sudan — a paltry million dollars worth — is a disgusting administrative decision that turns out to be simply one more such in a long tradition of moral blindness. [...]
Vietnamese Brides go to Korea
I found this story fascinating. There is plenty of room for exploitation in a system of marriage brokers. But having lived in Vietnam & read a bit of Vietnamese literature, I can tell you that there have always been such brokers & that the Vietnamese are in some ways quite unsentimental about marriage. They are [...]
The Map is Not the Territory
Two good meditations on the relationship of the scriptural map to the territory of reality by Fred Clark. I was particularly taken by Clark’s description of his awakening to reason because it bears a strong similarity to my own, though in my youth I moved away from the church more out of a sense that [...]
The Angel Moronic
Apparently, Mitt Romney has opined that people “without faith” should not hold public office. I don’t think he goes nearly far enough. teachers & doctors are far more important to society than politicians — why not have a religious test for them? Or for police officers? Postal workers & airline pilots? Oh, well, there is [...]
Rollin’ & Tumblin’
For me, Muddy Waters is the one essential blues artist. Of course, the idea that there could be a quintessential blues singer is absurd, but I put my finger down on McKinley Morganfield because he takes the Delta blues & its whole rural mythology & transforms it into an urban music that both affirms & [...]
Killers in the Classroom
I don’t have any Iraq war veterans in my classes, but I am heartily sick of the hagiography of “the troops” that is almost universal in American culture at the moment. This short essay by Dr. Jane Scorza Terpstra rings true. I’ve heard virtually the same thing from students who haven’t gone to Iraq, but [...]
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